Can't run autoinstall with ubuntu server 20.04

Good morning,

I have a problem with starting up autoinstall while booting Ubuntu Server 20.04 ISO. I have already read all documentation and couple internet manuals but I'm not able to make Ubuntu using user-data file.

I have user-data file prepared by Ubuntu installer. I'm trying to boot it with parameters like:

autoinstall ds=nocloud-net;s=ftp://repo/files/ubuntu2004/

I created an empty meta-data file, tried a lot of ftp/http, syntax combination for this. Nothing was successful so far. Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong? Each time cloud-init is loading but then it starts interactive installation. I'm running out of ideas :(

Solution 1:

FYI, ftp is not supported by cloud-init. This can be confusing because the documentation used to claim that is was, but that should be fixed now.

Since you claim that you also tried http without success, here are a few thoughts (for these items I simply replaced ftp in your URL with http for demonstration purposes)

• wrap the ds argument in quotes. Otherwise grub will ignore everything past the ;. E.g. ds="nocloud-net;s=http://repo/files/ubuntu2004/".
• confirm the user-data file can be downloaded by using curl in a terminal. E.g. this should print your file curl http://repo/files/ubuntu2004/user-data.
• check your web server logs to see if the user-data and meta-data files are being requested by the installer.
• access a terminal in the installer and check the logs in /var/log/installer